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Let’s cut to the chase: “Hamilton” — the widely-acclaimed, historically-based musical with a hip hop beat — is finally coming to Louisville via the PNC Broadway Across America series.

Even if you are just a casual theater-goer, you know what a big deal this is. You probably have friends who have watched the sky-high ticket prices for over a year. You might have the soundtrack memorized. Maybe, for you, the moment James Corden picked up Lin Manuel Miranda for “Carpool Karaoke” was the happiest 11 minutes and five seconds of last year’s Tony Awards season.

At this point, the details available about the show’s run in Louisville are still minimal.

“We don’t have dates that we can announce yet, we can’t say how long it will run, but that’s something we can talk about in the coming months,” says Matthew Porter, the director of public relations for PNC Broadway in Louisville

What we do know is that the show is coming sometime during the 2018-2019 season.

“We wanted to tease the fact that ‘Hamilton’ is coming because it is going to be a very hard ticket to get,” Porter says. “Being a subscriber, when we announce next season, everyone who is a subscriber will automatically be able to renew into the next season, so their tickets would be guaranteed.”

Alright, so you have a little while to wait before you can officially snag “Hamilton” seats — so let’s back up a bit.

Something equally exciting also happened Thursday morning: the 2017-2018 season of PNC Broadway Across America was announced (although the news was greatly overshadowed by the “Hamilton” release.)

The shows include: “Finding Neverland,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Chicago,” “School of Rock,” and “Waitress,” with season options of “Rent” and “Les Miserables.”

What is particularly special about this season of shows is that three of them — “Finding Neverland,” “School of Rock” and “Waitress” — are all new road shows. Louisville is one of the first stops for these touring productions now that they have finished their Broadway runs, which is a major sign of development in the city’s arts community.

“Louisville is a fantastic market for Broadway,” Porter says. “We have over 10,000 subscribers this year, 12,000 the year before, and it’s because of the passion of Louisville for theater that we’re getting these shows earlier than we used to.”

And while the casts that tour as part of the “Broadway Across America” series are very rarely, if ever, the original Broadway cast, Porter says — barring small tweaks based on theater size— it is basically the exact same show you would see in New York City.

“The director and producers are all on board from the get-go and they even have an opportunity to look at things that they wish they had had an opportunity to look at in the Broadway show and make those tweaks for the road show,” he says.